


Hope for the Future (Does Not Come Without Cost)

by ThreeWhiskeyLunch



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Inter-species friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeWhiskeyLunch/pseuds/ThreeWhiskeyLunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eve doesn't know one Salarian from another. Until one particular Salarian changes her life, and the lives of all her fellow Krogan, forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope for the Future (Does Not Come Without Cost)

**Author's Note:**

> Funny story. I was tagged twice in [ this post](http://baelthor.tumblr.com/post/149349500825/this-is-a-challenge-for-every-fanfiction-writer-xd) and frankly I didn't look too closely at the images to notice that what the OP was wanting was some Garrus x Bakara love. NOT Mordin x Bakara love.
> 
> What I wrote was Mordin and Bakara friendship. So really, this story has nothing to do with that post. At all. Beyond the fact that the pictures are of Mordin and Bakara. Very nice, lovely pictures.
> 
> I got nothing for Garrus x Bakara.

Before Maeleon she’d only heard about Salarians. How they had rewritten the Krogan future, taken away their hope, taken away their children. Taken away any chance she’d had to have a clutch of her own (or three, or seven, or…). She would stare out at the desolate landscape of her home planet, raped and destroyed by her own people, and feel the mirrored barrenness in her womb. It was a disturbing, and empty, feeling.  
  
When she’d been found on Tuchunka, malnourished and kept alive by the crudest of medical technology, it had been more Salarians that had filled her fevered head, bent over her bed, their horns strangely comforting in her delirium. As if she could grab hold and use them for purchase on her way up through the fog.  
  
She remembers attempting to reach out at one point to do just that, only to find her wrists bound--her feet as well--and while she was too weak to struggle, she wasn’t too weak to give voice to her displeasure.  
  
As the shuttle lifts off (to take her where? she doesn’t have the presence of mind to ask until it’s too late, but she knows she is not alone, that a few of her sisters are along, also strapped down, also malnourished and barely alive), the Salarian standing next to her tells her it’s for her own safety. She knows a lie when she hears one, able to rejoice that even on her deathbed, in the last throes of her life, she can still make others fear her.  
  
Perhaps she should have become a merc after all.  
  
~  
They tell her it has been months. She barely remembers. But each day she wakes and out the window is the strange sight of green and rain and beauty.  
  
She weeps for what her home planet had been. For what it is now.  
  
She weeps for her lost children.  
  
~  
One day there is a new Salarian at her side, releasing her and her sisters from the confines of their bindings and chiding the others in the room in a rapid patter of ramblings and direction. And apologizing to her for the mistreatment. His face is scarred, a horn missing, giving him a sort of lopsided look that barely has time to register before he has spun away, talking to himself more than anyone else as he types away at a console.  
  
He is there day after day, night after night. Talking, always talking, sometimes thoughtlessly humming under his breath. She has never heard so much talking and is surprised when she finds she really doesn’t mind; as if he is including her in the discussion, even though she might not have anything scientifically to add. The other sisters complain about the inexhaustible supply of words, but she’s quick to quiet them. This Salarian is different from all the others. He deserves their respect.  
  
~  
One by one her sisters fall.  
  
And one by one the Salarian mourns; takes long minutes out of his short life to stop, stand silently with his hand tight around her sister’s, breathing deeply in and out, in and out. Only to return to work with renewed fervor, as if sensing time slipping through his fingers.  
  
She weeps when she is the only one left.  
  
~  
He calls her ‘Eve’ and grins, holding up a datapad. “Need male Krogan samples: tissue, blood, semen. Perhaps there is hope.”  
  
The Salarian practically dances.  
  
~  
Wrex is a piece of work. But malleable in a way that surprises her. Unusual for a Krogan. She presses her advantage when she finds an opening; digs in and doesn’t come away disappointed. This is a Krogan to build a new empire with. This is a Krogan to father a new generation.  
  
She watches the Salarian from her perch on the bed of the Normandy sick bay. He barely stops to sleep and she finds herself reminding him to eat, surprised at the words after they have left her mouth.  
  
The Salarian halts mid-stride and looks at her, then grins and nods and peels open a ration bar, eating at his workstation.  
  
He does not stop working.  
  
~  
She sees the explosion and hears it seconds later and her heart aches in a way she never thought possible. No one has ever sacrificed themselves for her before. No one has ever shown her that much dedication. Not even Wrex, with his grand ideas about the future of the Krogan, has come close to showing her how valued she is; how treasured.  
  
There was a moment, too brief and now she sees too thoughtlessly cast away as it happened, when the Salarian had looked at her--only her--and had nodded, one corner of his mouth curving up in the smallest of smiles. She wishes now she had said something of importance. Something to convey her gratitude. Something to let this one special Salarian know how highly valued he was himself.  
  
It is too late when she realizes she never told him ‘Thank you’.  
  
Once more, she weeps for the loss.  
  
~  
There are five in her first clutch; swarming over each other, soft skinned and bright red, all mouths and large eyes. Wrex mulls them over, grunting in displeasure over the smallest--the runt of them--that fights his way up through the morass of arms and legs.  
  
“He’s too small,” he gripes.  
  
“He’s fine,” she says. She knows this to be true. He will be fine. It will all be fine. She has bright hope warming through her in a way she has never had. The sun beats down on Tuchunka and she has hope for the future of her people. “His name is Mordin.”  
  
~fin

**Author's Note:**

> So I don’t actually ship Mordin with anyone. I’m really ok with not being able to throw hearts at him in-game. Part of that may be that his story arc is so fascinating and well-written and I love him just as he is. Part of it may be that he serenades you with a musical number. Part of it may just be the understanding that that’s not really common in Salarian culture and being ok with that.
> 
> However.
> 
> I love the idea of Eve and Mordin as friends; wrapped up in a sort of sideways bromance that is, quite frankly, doomed. Because if you’re really lucky (spoilers!) only one of them dies in 3.
> 
> So instead of working on what I should have been writing during my lunch break today, this just sort of spilled out.


End file.
